Photo: Ringo Chiu/AFP/Getty Images
January 19 2017, 8:38 a.m.
ON SATURDAY, THE Women’s
March on Washington will kick off what opponents of the incoming administration
hope will be a new era of demonstrations against the Republican agenda. But in
some states, nonviolent demonstrating may soon carry increased legal risks —
including punishing fines and significant prison terms — for people who
participate in protests involving civil disobedience. Over the past few weeks,
Republican legislators across the country have quietly introduced a number of
proposals to criminalize and discourage peaceful protest.
The proposals,
which strengthen or supplement existing laws addressing the blocking or
obstructing of traffic, come in response to a string of high-profile highway
closures and other actions led by Black Lives Matter activists and opponents of
the Dakota Access Pipeline. Republicans reasonably expect an invigorated
protest movement during the Trump years.
In North Dakota,
for instance, Republicans introduced a bill last week that would allow motorists to run over
and kill any protester obstructing a highway as long as a driver does so
accidentally. In Minnesota, a bill introduced by Republicans last week
seeks to dramatically stiffen fines for freeway protests and would allow
prosecutors to seek a full year of jail time for protesters blocking a highway.
Republicans in Washington state have proposed a plan to reclassify as a felony
civil disobedience protests that are deemed “economic terrorism.” Republicans
in Michigan introduced and then last month shelved an anti-picketing law that would increase
penalties against protestors and would make it easier for businesses to sue
individual protestors for their actions. And in Iowa a Republican lawmaker
has pledged to introduce legislation to crack
down on highway protests.
Protesters demonstrating against the
Dakota Access oil pipeline stand on a burned-out truck near Cannon Ball, N.D.,
which they removed a day earlier from a long-closed bridge on a state
highway near their camp, Nov. 21, 2016.
Photo: James MacPherson/AP
The
anti-protesting bills have alarmed civil liberties watchdogs.
“This trend of
anti-protest legislation dressed up as ‘obstruction’ bills is deeply
troubling,” said Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil
Liberties Union, who views such bills as violations of the First
Amendment. “A law that would allow the state to charge a protester $10,000 for
stepping in the wrong place, or encourage a driver to get away with
manslaughter because the victim was protesting, is about one thing: chilling
protest.”
In North Dakota,
the author of the bill that would permit the killing of protestors has linked
his legislation directly to anti-pipeline activists’ successful protests that
involved obstructing roadways. Although the bill ostensibly requires drivers to
have acted “negligently” or accidentally in killing a protestor, the bill’s
co-sponsor, Republican state Rep. Keith Kempenich, has said that some
accidents might occur if motorists “punched the accelerator rather than the
brakes,” according to the Bismarck Tribune.
“If you stay off
the roadway, this would never be an issue,” said Kempenich. “Those motorists are
going about the lawful, legal exercise of their right to drive down the road.”
Republican
legislators behind the anti-protesting bill in Minnesota have also said that
their effort is in response to an increasing number of highway closures by
activists. In recent months, Black Lives Matter protests have made national
news for shutting down major freeways in Minneapolis, most recently in July when a group of protestors
blocked a main downtown thoroughfare to protest the police shooting of Philando
Castile. The bill elevates such protesting to a “gross
misdemeanor,” punishable by both a year in jail and a
fine of $3,000.
In addition to
the highway-protesting bill, Minnesota lawmakers also proposed a separate piece of legislation that greatly
increases penalties for nonviolent cases involving “obstructing the legal
process.” Under the bill’s language, nonviolent obstruction of authorities
would carry “imprisonment of not less than 12 months” and a fine of up to
$10,000.
Jordan S.
Kushner, a Minneapolis civil rights attorney who has represented Black Lives
Matter protesters, said this latter bill was “most alarming” because of its
dramatic penalty enhancement and its apparent targeting of nonviolent
protests.
“The statute is
very heavily abused by police to charge people with crimes in response to minor
resistance to police based on good faith disagreements with what they are
doing,” Kushner told The Intercept in an email. “It is frequently used in
response to people who verbally challenge or try to observe/record police at
protests.”
While other
anti-protesting proposals in Washington state and Iowa focus on protesters
blocking transit routes, a bill that was floated in Michigan appeared to target
labor unions. The legislation, which was passed by the Michigan House of
Representatives before being set aside by the state Senate last month, would
have enabled the state to fine individual picketers $1,000 per day of picketing
and would place a $10,000 daily penalty on a union presiding over such a
protest. A companion bill would have made it easier for employers to replace
striking workers.
Although it’s
unclear whether Michigan Republicans will reintroduce the legislation,
Democrats are not optimistic. “I think they absolutely will revive it,”
Democratic state Rep. Leslie Love told The Intercept.
In Washington, a
state where Democrats control both houses of the state legislature, there is
little chance that the plan to label protestors as “economic terrorists” will
advance. Prospects are better for the anti-protesting bills in Iowa, Minnesota,
and North Dakota, all of which have Republican-dominated legislatures.
In the case of
Minnesota, Kushner says the bills in question are seen as a “serious cause of
concern,” and he characterized the state’s new legislation as being purely
political.
“I think that
the motivations for the Republican legislators proposing bills to penalize
protests are to cater to the general public hostility towards Black Lives
Matter in the overwhelmingly white suburban and rural districts they
represent,” said Kushner in an email. “The goal is to criminalize
protesting to a greater degree and thereby discourage public dissent.”
Correction:
Jan. 19, 2017
An earlier
version of this article referred to Philando Castile as “unarmed.” In fact,
Castile told the officer who shot him that he was armed and had a license
to carry the weapon.
Top photo: Police form a line across the
road as demonstrators shut down the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles a day after
President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory, Nov. 9, 2016.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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